


thy woeful voice unweeping

by Visardist



Category: Loreley - Heinrich Heine
Genre: Canonical Character Death, F/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-09
Updated: 2020-05-09
Packaged: 2021-03-03 02:53:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24097633
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Visardist/pseuds/Visardist
Summary: It is said, of the Loreley, that he who hears her does not always drown.
Relationships: Die Loreley/Sailor
Comments: 14
Kudos: 8
Collections: Once Upon a Fic 2020





	thy woeful voice unweeping

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Ruis](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ruis/gifts).



Distant notes, unclear music. The cadence of a stranger's accent. A flash of gold at the edge of his vision.

*

It is said, of the Loreley, that he who hears her does not always drown. Perhaps the cargo or the passengers you carry is too important. Perhaps whimsy, or mercy. 

No, you do not always drown, not at once. This does not mean your death is not her doing. 

*

In the night, there is always music. 

Sweeter than sleep, winding through his heart and his mind with golden thread. When he wakes he feels it still, trapped in her grasp. What mercy is there in this? He cannot place even the simplest version of its melody. 

His fellows look askance at him, always twisting at some glint of yellow, never keeping pace without turning at the unfamiliar way someone says a common word. Many sail the Rhine without incident. Many make it past Sankt Goar without hearing a woman's song. But many, still, sink there without care or struggle. And though it happens seldom, it is not unknown for one's soul to sink before his body. 

*

He sleeps. He wakes. 

She is sitting in the rickety little chair in the corner. Her attention is on the tangled locks of her golden hair, almost affectedly so, the curve of her lips an unreadable line, the slightest tint of red in the little moonlight. 

She is humming. 

He stares at her figure, half turned from him, and breathes in, and breathes out. If she is not singing, is it still a dream?

When she is finished, she slants a glance at him across the room. He can only see clearly the whites of her eyes. 

She stops humming. 

He doesn't think he breathes as they gaze at each other. Silence now, the arc of her cheekbone in sharp relief, almost a death's head. The loudest sound, he thinks in sharp awareness, is his pulse, quick and fluttering, a butterfly trapped under the skin. 

The movement is so fast he thinks she has disappeared. Between one heartbeat and the next, she is upon him, a curtain of golden hair enclosing them, her hands cold on his shoulders. 

A deep and melodious voice, he remembers later. Like her music, he can recall only an impression. At one time, he recalls the syllables of his mother's language; at another, it is the flurry of his father's. 

Inside the curtain of her hair, the lines of her face are close to invisible, almost only white eyes in negative space. It's as if his head has disconnected from his body, hands feeling blindly, clumsily skimming what might be skin or what might be scales on what are certainly toes, past ankles to knees. 

She tells him many things, but he recalls none save the smallest of details. The sunsets she loves on cloudless evenings. Every year's new complement of birds. The sailors she allowed to pass. The ones she drowned immediately. 

What he does remember is that he initiates the kiss. Nothing sudden. His hands lightly roving up her knees, thighs, hips. Framing her waist, chastely sliding around her delicate ribs and up her spine. Drawing her in finally as his hands mirror hers, gently curved over her shoulders. 

Of all the things he might have dreamt, this he remembers in perfect clarity: her lips cold and bitter, slick, giving as he presses more boldly up. 

When the sun rises, this is how he knows he did not dream her -- the sting of blood where her eyetooth caught his lip. 

*

He doesn't remember to question her until the fourth night, and then he doesn't remember what you ask. She knows this. He can feel the soft laughter, mocking, cold, as her tongue slips from his mouth. His hands are still twined in her golden hair, so she hasn't far to go, but she rises until her locks are taut in his grip. 

Her teeth gleam in the dark, a savage line of laughter. 

He follows rather than release her. It's awkward and his elbows protest immediately, but when their lips meet again he begins asking. Not the questions he had, for those are still lost. Simpler things, inconsequential, that don't matter, so it doesn't matter if she can hear them.

He knows that she replies, but like before, there is nothing left come morning. 

*

The next time he sails the Rhine, his sleep is dreamless. No music in his ears, no silk twined in his fingers. His mouth tastes of nothing more than sleep. Strange, how he craves her more at her absence. When the dinner table talks of the day, he swings the conversation, studiously unobtrusive, to their progress. The closer they get to her perch, the more he wonders what he'll do. 

His fellows cannot ignore him, his frequent distractions, attempts at whistling. There are murmurs he does not pay attention to, superstitions swapped and debated far from his ears. 

He still cannot catch her melody, no matter what he tries. 

*

At the next dock, he slips away from the others, seeking out the corners of the market where magpies love to nest. The stallowners laugh and call to him, waving bracelets and lace for his sweetheart, rings and pendants for his wife. He glances here and there, seeking a specific kind of gift, his ear cocked for appeals to the enhanced beauty of his lover with their ornaments in her hair. 

The tradeswoman's professional smile widens as his path alters. He is one of many in her long experience, young men nervously fingering combs of horn and combs of ivory, lacquered or enamelled, carved and smoothed and delicately teethed. With ease she draws a description out of him-- what a taciturn fellow, when men do go on about the beauty of their promised ones-- and soon he is paying for one of her best combs, ebony with inlaid silver. He tucks the little package into his shirt as he goes.

*

He has the night watch for the next few days as they approach her rock, for which he's grateful. They will sail past her in as much light as is available, but while it's dark he can give her her gift without interference. It's good, really. Elsewise, he would seek for her in sunlight on the water, while reflected moonlight is nothing to her hair.

His fellows, also, anticipate their journey, less excited and more in dread. What he might do, what might be done to him… someone watches him every moment now. He cannot be let alone. But his duties are done with wavering whistling and humming that peters out, and he doesn't notice a second shadow. 

There is a slim pink line on the horizon where the sun is rising. And there, interrupting that line, is her rock. 

In the minimal light, he makes his way to the prow, fumbling for the wrapped comb in his pocket as he goes. On the water, little glints of gold are beginning to appear, and he leans eagerly out, the comb in one hand, ready to drop it into the water. So eager is he, so strong the rushing of distant music, he does not hear the footsteps behind him, only feels the hands on his shoulders, pushing him in after his gift.

They cannot do anything less. He was lost long ago.

*

Under the water, he watches the blurry gleaming sunrise, interrupted by the bubbles of his breath. The taste of bitter water is on his tongue, the rushing of the Rhine erasing everything else but her voice. He can hear her now as he sinks farther than the sun can reach, words clear and sweet, a threnody to welcome him.

**Author's Note:**

> Sankt Goar is one of the towns along the stretch of the Rhine where the Loreley rock is located, the opposite being Sankt Goarshausen.


End file.
